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Rules soon to regulate infertility clinics

New Delhi: The Union government has informed the Supreme Court that it would soon frame guidelines to regulate clinics and nursing homes offering Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) to childless couple.

Additional Solicitor-General (ASG) Gopal Subramaniam indicated this before a Bench comprising Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justices P. Sathasivam and J.M. Panchal on Wednesday during the hearing of a public interest litigation petition by a couple from Kerala seeking proper guidelines for regulation of ART clinics.

The ASG said it was a serious matter and the Centre was deeply concerned over the unregulated mushrooming of fertility clinics. It would shortly come out with some guidelines that would be implemented in all States till legislation was put in place.

“The process of enacting a mandatory law is already on. However, guidelines will be enforced till the law is enacted.” The Bench granted four weeks to the Centre to file an affidavit.

The first petitioner was aggrieved over the Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection treatment given to her in a clinic as it did not produce the desired results, though she became pregnant. Her condition became serious and pregnancy had to be terminated.

The couple alleged that they were victims of illegal treatment given by the clinic doctors and absence of any law to regulate such clinics was a cause of concern to the public. The Kerala High Court rejected their petition and the present petition was against that order.

The couple raised important questions of social and ethical relevance — whether under the guise of ART doctors/infertility clinics were legally entitled to use donor ova or donor sperm or donor embryo with or without the consent of the spouse concerned; in the absence of any law regulating the use of donor ova or donor sperm as part of ART, was it not illegal to use the same in the infertility treatment and was it legal for infertility clinics and hospitals to run or act as sperm banks, ova banks or embryo banks.

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